The project is brainchild of Society of Homo Ludens, an experimental and research studio that is exploring the relationship of people and places through curated urban, architectural and sensorial experiences and interventions. During Grow Op 2014, in collaboration with STUDIO JAYWALL, a Toronto-based graphic and interactive design studio, ‘Playshop’ will be introduced as a place of inspiration, action and participation. A shop of games, urban artefacts, sound recordings, narrated maps, found objects, and urban exploration toolkits will represent the result of individual and group Playwalks in pilot neighbourhoods in Toronto.

Playwalk is a practice of exploring the city for no other purpose than play, navigating the urban landscape with the body as a vessel and using instincts as a compass. Playwalk is feeling the texture of an old brick wall, it is to peep through a hole in the hoarding fence and to listen to the train passing by, it is following a scent to an unknown garden and counting your steps until the next stranger blurbs the word ‘yesterday’.

GROW OP will be on public display at the Gladstone April 24 – 27, 2014